In this week’s Takimag column, the skeptical doctor speaks out against the overrated personal characteristic of ambition, tells of his reliable and wise French gardener, and admonishes Nietzsche for his enthusiastic support of the decline of the Christian faith.

I grant that ambition is sometimes, or often, necessary, but it is a virtue, like bravery, that is not self-standing. To be brave in a bad cause is worse than to be cowardly in the same cause. And it hardly takes much historical knowledge to realize that ambition can be the closest ally of monstrous evil.